By IANS,
Port-of-Spain: West Indies captain Darren Sammy feels his batsmen need to play Indian spinners better going into the five-match One-day series beginning at the Queen’s Park Oval here Monday.
Sammy said they gave 20 runs too many to India that cost them the Twenty20 international Saturday. Playing in front a capacity crowd at the Queen’s Park Oval, West Indies fell 16 runs short of their target of 160 after India made 159-6 off their 20 overs.
Sammy was superb with the ball taking 4-16 from his four overs.
“We stuck at it to start with but I would say we let them get 20 runs too many and in the end that made the difference in the match,” Sammy said.
Sammy touched on the areas where he felt the team need to improve.
“The batsmen have been doing a lot of work with Desmond Haynes (batting consultant) and we are seeing some improvements. We will keep working and looking for scoring opportunities against the spinners. The batsmen should play the spinners better come Monday,” Sammy said.
“We did some good things today but as we reflect on the match we would all agree that we let a few situations get away from us. We have to work harder at winning those crucial situations, which can turn a match, especially in the shortest version of the game. It was a good decision to field first after winning the toss, but we didn’t restrict them to the total we wanted,” Sammy said.
In the batting, left-hander Darren Bravo, playing before his home crowd, made run-a-ball 41. At the bottom of the innings new boys Chris Barnwell (34 not out) and Danza Hyatt (14 not out)- both in their second match at this level – played some massive shots and added 50 runs off just 22 balls.
“It was great to see how Barnwell played and tried his best to keep us in the hunt. He got some great help from Hyatt at the end. It was nice to see the guys showing the confidence and self-belief required.”